Re: Engines Earl ran, places he worked...
| January 06, 2019 12:18PM |
|
I thought only the Royal Family had the paparazzi following them around..... this is getting weird.
The Crown I ran was a 3' gauge version. big enough to be a real locomotive, even if it looked like a bad cartoon drawing.. Here is a self-portrait on a typical hot August morning in 1977 when I was done giving her a boiler wash, which we did every week on account of the terrible water we had to deal with and a lack of boiler water treatment chemicals. Please excuse the wonky angle caused by a 28mm wide angle lens..... look at all that hair, and the cool shades.
I had to rescan this pic to post it as my external hard drive to which I sent all my scanned slides and pics for storage had a fatal crash. I assume all the stuff is still in there, but I need to send to someone who can extract the data off the internal disk for me....
The pic of the Kahuku doubleheaded with the Oahu Sugar #1 is a rare treat. That happened briefly after I left in '79 when both the Dixianna and the Heisler were down and they had to run something. The OS 1 was owned by an RC stockholder who later sold it to some in Japan. It would have a real terror to run on RC's 8.5+% grades with that long skinny boiler and tall crown sheet. At least OS #1 was equipped with air brakes, something that the Kahuku did not.
One of my more insane "I can't believe I did that, go away with it, and lived to tell about it" things I did was run the Kahuku and one car (all she could pull) up to Bear Mountain and back, braking all of it down those steep grades by hand brakes alone - with paying passengers. Kahuku had a steam brake, which sort of did something on the flat. To help that out, there was a modern Ajax brake wheel in the cab to had more leverage. Then on top of that, I had her in reverse with the throttle cracked. The conductor was leaning hard on the handbrake with a 5' long steel jack bar.
Not only that we did it twice that day. Makes we shiver to think about it.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/06/2019 12:30PM by Earl.
The Crown I ran was a 3' gauge version. big enough to be a real locomotive, even if it looked like a bad cartoon drawing.. Here is a self-portrait on a typical hot August morning in 1977 when I was done giving her a boiler wash, which we did every week on account of the terrible water we had to deal with and a lack of boiler water treatment chemicals. Please excuse the wonky angle caused by a 28mm wide angle lens..... look at all that hair, and the cool shades.
I had to rescan this pic to post it as my external hard drive to which I sent all my scanned slides and pics for storage had a fatal crash. I assume all the stuff is still in there, but I need to send to someone who can extract the data off the internal disk for me....
The pic of the Kahuku doubleheaded with the Oahu Sugar #1 is a rare treat. That happened briefly after I left in '79 when both the Dixianna and the Heisler were down and they had to run something. The OS 1 was owned by an RC stockholder who later sold it to some in Japan. It would have a real terror to run on RC's 8.5+% grades with that long skinny boiler and tall crown sheet. At least OS #1 was equipped with air brakes, something that the Kahuku did not.
One of my more insane "I can't believe I did that, go away with it, and lived to tell about it" things I did was run the Kahuku and one car (all she could pull) up to Bear Mountain and back, braking all of it down those steep grades by hand brakes alone - with paying passengers. Kahuku had a steam brake, which sort of did something on the flat. To help that out, there was a modern Ajax brake wheel in the cab to had more leverage. Then on top of that, I had her in reverse with the throttle cracked. The conductor was leaning hard on the handbrake with a 5' long steel jack bar.
Not only that we did it twice that day. Makes we shiver to think about it.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/06/2019 12:30PM by Earl.
Sorry, only registered users may post in this forum.
488 stops for water at Los Pinos tank on closing day Oct. 1979. Photo courtesy Don Richter
The NGDF was started by Don Richter and is currently operated in his memory by Nathan Holmes and others. Others who have contributed to the upkeep of this board are (in no particular order): Charles McCandless, Everett Lueck, Ted Wilton, Cole Adams, James Bane, John Moellmer, Jon Bentz, Linn Moedinger, lloyd lehrer, Rod Jensen, John Craft, Steven Forney, Herb Kelsey, Bill Ramaley, Russ Sperry (El Russo Loco), Josh McNeal, John West, Jim Armstrong, Bob Bergstrom, Greg Scholl, Blake Forbes Doug van Veelen and Mark Fuller.